Gary Yourofsky is a name that will ring a bell with most vegans. The animal rights activist, from Detroit, Michigan, is credited with singlehandedly turning more people vegan – including 8% of Israel – than anyone else in the world, after an hour-long speech he gave at Georgia Tech was recorded, translated into Hebrew, and shared on social media. In it Gary, 45, who is Jewish himself, controversially calls slaughterhouses "concentration camps" and compares the treatment of animals to the Holocaust.

The speech, which was recorded in the U.S., is now the most-viewed in Israel's history, and is thought to have been the cataylst for a large portion of Israel's population to go vegan. Indeed, according to Israeli media, Yourofsky is responsible for increasing Israel's vegan population from 5% to 13%.